{"id":1827,"date":"2015-04-30T13:15:52","date_gmt":"2015-04-30T13:15:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/?p=1827"},"modified":"2015-04-30T13:15:52","modified_gmt":"2015-04-30T13:15:52","slug":"homesick-the-new-nature-of-things-in-a-connected-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/2015\/04\/homesick-the-new-nature-of-things-in-a-connected-world\/","title":{"rendered":"HOME\/SICK : the new nature of things in a connected world"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was asked some months ago by the Science Gallery in Dublin to join the\u00a0curation team to help choose pieces for the HOME\/SICK exhibition<\/a> which is opening to the public tomorrow. We were presented with a number of artworks which would fit within traditional boundaries such as sculpture, architecture, video work, paintings but the team had a desire to introduce more smart objects in the mix. But\u00a0how do you show connected objects which say something without only selling something? As the industry\u00a0of connected products (or #iot if you’re on Twitter) progresses, so do commercial success stories. But you can’t just put a Nest thermostat\u00a0on display. It wouldn’t add to the discourse, it just is. Neither can you show work that would suffer from Julian’s 15 criteria for interactive art<\/a> (which, even if written in 2008, still rings true). Tricky business.<\/p>\n

And there’s the theme of the exhibition of course. HOME\/SICK reminds us of\u00a0the growing pains that consumers are experiencing buying into the idea of a smart home\u00a0and smart every day objects\u00a0(I’m obviously guilty of this myself with the Good Night Lamp<\/a>). It also points to the\u00a0diminishing\u00a0space within our homes where advertising and constant engagement is impossible. The bedroom? Ha! Laptops, mobile phones, smart beds, smart bracelets, heart monitors, it’s all there. Living alongside people and their night life, or\u00a0lack thereof<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We’re also moving away from home constantly. This could be benign like\u00a0going off to university or moving to London for work. But it could also be that you are displaced because your country is at war or a natural distaster has struck. It could be you move for a new job opportunity or the love of our life. We are being encouraged to think of the\u00a0world as global. This is of course bullshit. There is always a place to call home.<\/p>\n

Talk to any immigrant and they’ll have a place they call home even if they take a flight a month for work. When we’re not at home, we’re in limbo. We adapt to our condition and we try to pretend we’re at home with this state. We make Aeropress coffee on airplanes, we bring our tea and cushion with us, we have favorite hotels, favorite coffee places, friends everywhere. We order english breakfast tea in Spain. We ship\u00a0pies-in-a-tin to California. We bring back\u00a0St-Viateur bagels in our suitcase. But it’s not home and no amount of technology can help us overcome that saudade.<\/p>\n

The reality is also that sadly everything changes all the time. It’s one of life’s certainties. The home we lived in won’t stay that way forever (even Elvis’s birthplace was furnished with what his father remembered of the place some 30 years later). We hold on to home when it doesn’t hold on to us. Clubs close down. Cities experience gentrification. Buildings are demolished. Should technology help us bask in the past or should we grow up and realise that we have little to hold on to and that’s that?<\/p>\n

Examining this would make for a fantastic GDS project<\/a>\u00a0 but in the meantime, go see the work of my colleagues and myself in Dublin, you won’t regret it. It’s all there, for you to think about what you\u00a0are holding on to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was asked some months ago by the Science Gallery in Dublin to join the\u00a0curation team to help choose pieces for the HOME\/SICK exhibition which is opening to the public tomorrow. We were presented with a number of artworks which would fit within traditional boundaries such as sculpture, architecture, video work, paintings but the team… Continue reading HOME\/SICK : the new nature of things in a connected world<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"HOME\/SICK : the new nature of things in a connected world #iot","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-internet-of-things","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p41XhY-tt","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1827"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1827\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1828,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1827\/revisions\/1828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}